1. Field of Invention
The current invention relates generally to apparatus, systems and methods for radio communication. More particularly, the apparatus, systems and methods relate controlling radio communication. Specifically, the apparatus, systems and methods provide for controlling radio communication at the application layer.
2. Description of Related Art
Many communication radios are designed to be point-to-point or use multiple access methods that do not permit carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) to be applied. CSMA and other standards can allow radios to share channels that otherwise could not be shared. Normally substantial radio changes are required to permit CSMA to be implemented. This is because many of the parameters used to implement CSMA have to be determined fast in hardware in the lower levels such as the Medium Access Controller (MAC) and PHY. For example, selecting carrier frequency, enabling and disabling the transmitter, selecting a transmitter center frequency, controlling some queues (flushing, prioritizing queuing of control packets, controlling queue status indicators), determining receive signal strength (RSSI) and the carrier lock indicator (CLI), are usually at least partially performed in lower layers. Many of these controls and values require precise timing that can often only be achieved with dedicated hardware at the MAC and/or PHY layers. In order to create a radio the shares multiple channels across multiple radios a new radio would have to be designed from the PHY level on up requiring the original radio to be designed to implement CSMA or another algorithm for sharing channels. What is needed is a better way of implementing channel capabilities in radios.